into neverland we shall sail
by seacoast
Summary: "peter pan" ends on a sour note. -marshall lee/fionna


((into neverland we shall sail))

* * *

Even as the colors of the world collapse upon themselves and he (she) looks at her (him), and a new divide stretches before them like a vast blue ocean, they still feel the same electric current running strong, feel the pull drawing them together, and they leap across the chasm into each others' arms.

She kisses him furiously, her lips clamped onto his, and he breathes her in-spice and sugar, blood and soil and salt-and he floats off from the ground, pulling them both into the sky, and the clouds stretch before them like endless mounds of snow and he only knows that he loves her to the very ends of the earth.

* * *

They tear down the old gods with every touch, the memory of her lips upon his burning with a fiery intensity, just as patches of cold linger on her skin and send shivers up her spine.

He teases her, playing with her hair, flying circles around her, and she huffs indignantly and swats at him with her sword, warrior girl that she is, but he's only jesting and soon enough, he finds her buried in the crook of his arm, snug as Cake in her lap, her blonde tresses flowing freely from under her still ridiculous rabbit-eared cap.

* * *

"You're like, fucking Peter Pan," she says, one day on a rocky cliff. He gives her an odd when, and she elaborates, "Y'know. You can fly, you don't age..." She grins impishly and mimes pointy elf ears. "If your ears were pointier and you dressed in varying shades of green, you'd be perfect."

"You'd be my Tinkerbell, then," he answers, and sticks out his tongue. She sticks out her tongue back.

"Idiot."

"Weirdo."

But deep down, he thinks about her comparison, thinks that he and Peter Pan are quiet similar, and he wonders if Fionna would be his Tinkerbell, or if it would be the other way around.

* * *

And he has to keep reminding himself, _Stop this, stop this at once, you know this fantasy won't last forever._

But somehow, he keeps forgetting it later, those thoughts lost in a sea that only reads, _Fionna_, and there is no room for anything else so he loses himself in her warmth and sits on hills with her and looks at the stars and they plan their next big adventure under the glow of the full moon.

And those wayward realizations crop up again and again, and he keeps burying them in his brain.

* * *

And then, his mistake comes to bite him in the ass when they're fighting off swarms of demons, infernal legions that keep on coming. He shoots fires from his palms and whips them away with mere glances, but she slashes and cuts and hacks like an RPG character, her skirt and socks stained red and black with blood, ichor, but she's fine, she can handle herself-

-and then she can't. A demon roars, vicious, stabs her in the chest-

-and she's frozen-

-and she looks at him, terrified-

-and mouths, _Marshall_ before collapsing, and he stares back and pauses for a few seconds before letting out an earsplitting scream, thrusting out a fist and dispersing the foul congregation before they can ready another strike. He dashes over, tears running down his face, because he's undead but oh, he _feels her dying_, he can feel the life draining out of her with each grain of sand that slips down the neck of the hourglass, ohshitohshitohshit

"Marshall," she gasps weakly when he arrives.

Without warning, he bites her on the neck. She gasps, shocked.

"You're not going to die," he breathes thickly. "I'm going to save you."

"Marshall, no-" she chokes out, but he shushes her with a finger.

"Don't, Fionna," he says, sniffling, _sad_ (for the first time in his miserable existence). "I don't-don't say those things. You're going to _live_, Fionna, I'll be damned if you have a say in anything this time, so just shut up and _stop bleeding_-"

"Marshall," Fionna whispers, so quiet that he actually has to strain his ears to listen. "There's no point."

"Fionna, no, shut up, shut up right now-"

"_Marshall_." Her voice is firm, but urgent. She grins through bloody teeth. "It's over."

He doesn't understand that it's over, because it's never been over. Never.

(but the thoughts rise, black and bubbling to the surface, and he remembers that he's Peter Pan and she's Wendy but she didn't want to stay in Neverland because she wanted to _live_, and she was stupid but she's bleeding now and he doesn't know what to do)

"Fionna." He puts all his love into her name, all his desires, his aspirations, and can't she see that he's poured all of himself into her being, that he can't go on if she doesn't go on, can't she _fucking see_?

Her hand, smooth and soft, reaches up and strokes his cheek (his cold, dead cheek).

"Live, Marshall," she murmurs, the request as benign as a priest's benediction. Her hands trace circles-

-and then it falls, and they're alone on a battlefield with an adventure gone wrong (this wasn't supposed to happen), and he howls to the world on his knees.

(oh, he wishes, he wishes for impermanence but he can't find it)

* * *

He sits in all the spots they used to sit in, and he remembers _Fionna_, supposedly eternal, and he knows that he's immortal and for the first time in an eternity, being alive is a curse.

(and he throws out his fairytales because they weren't worth shit in the end, anyway)

And godammit, he can't be eternal, he can't be immortal without _her._


End file.
